August 25, 2018

an exciting geographical discovery

I should have known something like this would happen today. My bagel was trying to tell me it would. I had a perfectly normal cinnamon and cream cheese Bagel Thin, and when I was finished eating it, I looked down and an owl was staring at me.

I also hate people who interrupt my lunch hour, Donald Trump, and vagueness.

So then this happened:

I'm pretty self-importantly maniacal about checking blog stats. This is, in the greater scheme of things, clenching proof of my lack of sanity, since it's rare that I get more than twenty hits on a post, and that's when most of my friends and family read it because I send the link by e-mail. I know that what I'm always looking for is a new reader. Then I go to the site I use for tracking that maps people, and I try to figure out where the new person is located. I don't know why I want to know this, but it makes me happy, especially when it's somewhere exotic like Kansas or Canada. Someone from a town in southern North Carolina hit yesterday and I know who I hope it is and that made me really happy.

The point is, it's just a wee bit of self-indulgence, not tied to wanting to be famous or get loads of comments and attention. That would all be a tremendous burden and I do not want it. Twenty's a big number, to me. More than that and suddenly I'm not as free to write what I please.

What happened today, though, didn't come from Google Analytics or StatCounter. It came from Blogger itself. It was this:

Do you see that down there, just above Philippines (which, along with Portugal and France, was 99.99% chance hits by bot)? Unknown Region. No country colored in for it on the map. This is a Google product. Google has mapped the planet. You're telling me there's Unknown Region out there, and further, that it contains a literate population and/or equipment capable of bot-crawling the Internets?

I want to go there.

Where the hell is this Unknown Region? Is it where all the flowers have gone? Does it have lost socks? Times past? The two fluffy bathrobes we used to own that disappeared years ago? Is the person who read my blog twice wearing one of the bathrobes and my mismatched socks? Is it even real? Would I need a passport? Is a long, grueling hike interwoven with near-death adventure required to reach it?

I don't even know which continent it's on, or if there's an eighth continent that, with all of our satellites and radio waves and flying machines, we somehow missed, or if a region of a first-world European nation quietly broke off without telling anyone and went DarkNet. If so, don't worry; I haven't outed you, New Surreptitious Nation, because I don't even have twenty readers. It's cool.

Or maybe the reader is a yogi on a mountain top with a satellite modem and a Panasonic Toughbook. Maybe he used to work for Google and stayed in Tibet instead, never uploading the mapping coordinates he'd gathered. Now, he's a one-man Unknown Region. Probably in a warm bathrobe and odd socks.

8 comments:

He is the Nowhere Man and he lives under the sea in a yellow submarine made famous by a pop group back in the 1960's, which is why he is in an "Unknown Region" -- and he's found your blog! BRAVO! And I'm jealous because I have people around the world that check out my blog, but I don't have Nowhere Man! I don't remember for sure, but he may also have a hole in his pocket. Also, sorry to disappoint you that I'm not someone new, but I hope it's okay if I continue to comment. Also, I hope you don't mind if I give you a shout out in a future post, particularly for people to check out this post. It is both hysterical and so damned true! They may or may not comment, because it takes a major will of steel and determination to post a comment here. I have both. I think you've set it up this way intentionally. Or I may be wrong about that. Lastly, you saw an owl in your Rorschach cinnamon test; however, I saw something else. Hmm.

Okay, third comment, because P.J. just read your comment and asked me what you meant by takes a will of steel to comment here ... set it up intentionally, and I was all, Because she found my blog through The Bloggess, I think, and thus she must be insane like us, and wrestle with her brain like us, and beyond that I have no idea, because I'm sitting here cleaning things up as you point out typos, wearing hedgehog and apple lounge pants, and I can't remember if I've even brushed my teeth yet today and it's late afternoon, so I have somehow managed to successfully hide the fact that I am the polar opposite of intimidating. And anyway, I love that she comments a lot because it makes me feel heard by Out There and her blog is cool and so is her dog. This is what I said to P.J. just now.

Well, since you asked...the will of steel part refers back to my August 10 post entitled I.Am.Not.A.Robot. which details all of the issues I've had in making comments on various blogs. *ahem* Not that I would ever mention any names, Lille Sparven...however, let's just say that I have to type in https://www.waywardsparkles.com/ each and every time I comment on your blog as well as another blog I frequent. And if I screw it up, then it tells me I'm in error and it erases my entire comment so I have to start over from the very beginning. That isn't anyone's fault or anything, I've just had to learn how to type and then triple check that I have that information typed in correctly before I hit publish. The upside is that I now know my blog site URL address (the entire thing) by heart. It really becomes a challenge when I'm trying to do any of this on my phone versus my computer. I'm at my PC as I write this, for instance, just because I know better than to do this on my phone. Anyway, I've noticed from other sources that the other person's blog that I'm talking about, Pip's Tips, I love her blog, btw, that someone besides me also had a difficult time commenting on one of her posts. So, I figure that it is set up that way intentionally. But as I stated above, I may be wrong about that. Not sure that anything can be done about that anyway. So...let's see what was the other question? Oh yeah, what did I see. Well, I mean, it's obvious, isn't it? How can you not look at that and see two UFO's colliding in mid air? Just kidding. My first thought when I read the name of your post and then saw the plate was, "Oh, have we located some new G Spot located in the breast region that I don't know about?" Then that thought merged into, "Why is there an impression of two breasts on this plate?" cuz I know Lille isn't going to write about G Spots located in the breast region. I mean, face it, you're pretty damned classy. Okay, in my head I said 'titties.' But I didn't know I'd be writing about this or I would have though breasts. But again, you asked, so sue me. No. I didn't really mean that last part. Please don't sue me. Not that I have any money anyway. However, it's the long, drawn-out process that drives me nuts.

Also, Aww! You think my blog is cool. Thank you. I like yours too.Last but not least, my Consuela Cactus just came in the mail but I don't have the heart to rip her open. Dammit! I wasn't expecting I'd have to do that! I also bought one for my daughter along with a pair of balls in their own sac. I told her that if anyone ever questions her about whether she has any balls or not, she can always show them to the person and say, "Yes. Yes I do. My mother bought me a pair!"

It's just that the pupils look owl-like, slits, really, and never seen titties with nipples shaped like that, although I suppose there are some out there, or maybe they were in nipple clips for a week. Hard to say. Then there are the angry eyebrows and that one smudge in the cinnamon that looks like the start of a beak. I think orange marmalade and butter on the bagel tomorrow instead. It's ... easier that way. :)